By Culture News

Allie Eve Knox, an adult content creator specializing in findom (financial domination, a fetish related specifically to payment), has gotten a lot of unique requests before: “Armpit tickling. Armpit humiliation. Pegging my lawyer,” she says, ticking them off. Someone once asked her to role-play as an evil substance abuse counselor; another hired her to make a video where she pretends to buy Tesla stock. And just last week, she made a video where she pretended to make dog shit cookies. 

Yet one of the most bizarre requests she’s ever received was from a woman who wanted her to shame and humiliate her wayward ex-husband. “A woman just ordered a custom video from me to send to her ex-husband and have me shame him for all the shit he did while they were together and I’ve never felt more needed in my entire life,” she wrote in a tweet that quickly went viral. The resulting custom video she made falls into a genre she’s referring to as “spite porn.” 

According to Knox, the client reached out to her asking if she could commission a video about her ex-husband. The woman “thought it would be a great way to have him hear what a terrible person he is,” Knox says. As is customary, Knox asked her what she wanted in the script, and the woman wrote back with a list of specific details: “His porn obsession, his narcissism, how he is self absorbed. Stuff that could speak to most men,” as well as other assorted misdeeds that the woman shared with her privately. Knox recorded two versions of the video: one for the woman specifically, and a generic one she could resell on her custom clips page. 

The beginning starts out like a typical smutty custom clip, with Knox being sexy and teasing. “Well, hello,” she says coquettishly, her legs spread on the ground. “I know this is quite the unexpected surprise, but someone bought this video especially for you.” The rest of the clip proceeds like a standard porn clip, with Knox moaning and massaging her breasts, until about three minutes in. “Now that I’ve got you right where I want you, I think I’ll share a little secret with you, a little surprise I’ve been keeping,” she says. “I’ve befriended your ex-wife.” She emits an evil chuckle before launching into a barrage of insults directed at the “stupid, careless, selfish son-of-a-bitch” ex-husband. It’s a hilarious and, frankly, pretty badass video. 

Knox’s tweet went viral in large part because of how unique the request was: Even in an industry where anything goes, she says she’s never gotten a custom clip request intended for a spurned ex before. But it’s far from uncommon for sex workers like Knox to serve as a canvas for clients to enact their frustrations with a failed relationship, or an outlet for them to blast an ex with no risk of repercussions.

Jessie Sage, a writer and sex worker, recounts being approached by a client on the phone-sex platform Niteflirt who had broken up with his girlfriend several months before and wanted closure. Together, the two orchestrated a role-play scenario in which Sage would pretend to be the ex running into the client at a party, and he’d ask her to go outside and talk. They then got into a screaming match. “I got so lost in it that I realized I was blaming him for things I was actually mad about in my own life and he was doing the same,” she recalls. After the client hung up on her, she contacted him to check in to see if he was OK. He said he was, and that he hung up because “it seemed like a powerful way for him to end things, on his terms,” she says. “And then I never heard from him again.” Sage says it’s far from uncommon for people to reach out to sex workers to share these sorts of intimate feelings. “We don’t make space for that in our culture, and they can be kind of anonymous with us, and also less embarrassed to ask for what they want,” she says. 

The rise of custom adult content on sites like Customs4U and IWantClips has also given customers more space to make such requests. The genre has exploded during the pandemic, Knox says. “I’m shooting a fuck ton of customs every fucking day now,” she says. “I think this is the real surge of personalized porn.” Knox isn’t sure if the customer actually sent the clip she made to her ex, but even if she didn’t, she appreciates that it helped her work out her demons. And if she did, “then that mother fucker deserves all the shame that I sent.”